Food, glorious food!

New foods that are playing a more prominent role the Starhill diet in Spain

I live in a household of (generally) not very adventurous eaters. But since I’m usually the cook and the food shopper, I have had a chance to take some small steps toward diversifying the food we eat to take advantage of what is special and unique to Spain. Here are the top 10 foods that have worked their way into Starhill stomachs.

1. Pan

See an earlier post for our testimonial to bread. Each day, usually about mid-morning, Heather or I take a 10-minute walk to one of several places that sell fresh baguettes. We buy two baguettes – total price a bit less than $2 – that lasts us through the day. Often as an easy dinner, we feed the kids bocadillos, which is what the Spanish call sandwiches that use baguette bread. Usually bocadillos are very simple – no lettuce, tomato, mayo, mustard, etc. – just bread and the filling. Popular fillings are chorizo (see #2 below), salami, tortilla (see #5 below), and US-style ham. After a day, these baguettes get very stale and are generally not useful, although it is nice to dunk stale bread into my gazpacho (see #4 below).

Right now we tend to get our bread from several different places. When we are going to the (big supermarket) Al Campo anyway, we pick up bread from them. Sometimes we go to a cafe that makes bread as well as lots of different kinds of cookies; these baguettes have an especially flaky and crunchy crust. Sometimes we go to another bakery that has a more traditional baguette with a smooth crust.

2. Chorizo

Spanish chorizo is very different from what I was used to calling chorizo in America (spicy sausage or ground meat). Chorizo here is pork sausage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorizo

It can be bought cured (no need to cook, just slide and eat or put in a bocadillo) or raw. Of the varieties that we’ve had here, right now we seem to like what is called chorizo Asturiano, which I think is popular in the north of Spain. It is pretty flavorful and spicy, but not in the same way that chili peppers are spicy. We get it at the Al Campo but also at a number of small neighborhood butcher shops near us. We recently found another type of chorizo that is native to another region of Spain called chorizo Jaen; it is supposedly a bit more mild (suave, in Spanish) and so will be worth a try.

3. Olives

I love olives, and they are abundant here in Spain. At the supermarket we buy the familiar green olives and the familiar black olives, but there are also many other varieties to try. My current favorite is called Campo Real (named after the area in Spain where they are from). They are a brighter shade of green than the familiar green olive, a bit softer, a bit larger pit, and more juicy.

It is very common, when you order a drink or a soda in a bar, to be served some sort of small munch-y snack. Potato chips are common (see ham-flavored potato chips from an earlier post). But I tend to ask for aceitunas (olives).

4. Gazpacho

Spanish gazpacho is a bit different from what one often finds in America. For one, it is smooth, not chunky. (Although it is also common to sprinkle some chopped peppers, onions, and even bread on top of a bowl of gazpacho.) But basically it is a chilled tomato soup, with cucumbers, onions, peppers, vinegar, garlic, and olive oil. I don’t remember having it much in the US, but I really love it here.

In a Spanish grocery store, it is common to find gazpacho in milk cartons (e.g., a quart size), in the chilled aisles near the vegetables. Most people just pour themselves a glass of gazpacho – it is more of a drink than it is a soup.

If anyone else in my family would drink it, I would love to make my own gazpacho. (Our apartment doesn’t have a blender, but I’d love an excuse to buy one!) So I buy the pre-made gazpacho in the milk cartons and it is very good. If I were to make my own homemade gazpacho, I would surely use the recipe of our friend Miguel from Aranjuez, which is a town just south of Madrid. His gazpacho is very yummy. Here I include his recipe (without getting his permission – I hope this is OK, Miguel!), in case anyone wants to try it at home.

Also, a word on olive oil. Although it is possible to buy other kinds of oil in Spain (vegetable, canola, sunflower, sesame, etc.), most people only use olive oil. As a result, stores sell two main kinds of olive oils. Extra virgin olive oil is what we usually buy in the states. However, the second kind (called suave, or mild) is a much milder-tasting oil. It can be used in cooking or baking where one doesn’t want to have the strong flavor of olive oil. You’ll note that in this recipe, Miguel uses suave olive oil. For cooks in the US, you’ll need to use extra virgin and perhaps add a little extra water or ice to make it a bit more mild.

Gazpacho, by Miguel Abánades

Ingredientes:

* 1200 g. tomates maduros (si la batidora es buena, no es necesario pelarlos, pero si no, necesitarás pelarlos y para ello se hierven unos segundos en agua para que la piel se separe fácilmente)

* 1/2 cebolla mediana (80 g. aprox) pelada

* 1 pepino pequeño pelado

* 1 pimiento verde pequeño sin las pepitas

* 1 manzana pelada

* 1/2 diente de ajo

* 1 taza (200 ml.) de aceite de oliva suave (NO virgen)

* 2 Cucharadas de vinagre (de vino)

* 1 Cucharadita de sal

Opcional: miga de pan a remojo en agua

Para prepararlo se lavan las verduras y se parten en trozos y se baten en la batidora hasta que quede fino. Con esta cantidad salen aproximadamente 2 litros de gazpacho. Hay que ponerlo en la nevera y servirlo muy frío.

(Hay gente que añade un poco de agua (o hielo) para que quede más suave, Y hay gente que para tomarlo añade por encima trozos pequeños de tomate, cebolla, pimiento verde, pepino y pan.)

Buen provecho!

5. Tortilla

Here I mean what sometimes is called “Spanish Tortilla” or tortilla Española, not the flat bread that is common in Mexican food. Tortilla is served in a variety of ways here – as tapas, in a bocadillo, as part of a big meal. I have always loved eggs, potatoes, and onion concoctions, of which this is another variety.

I’ve been ordering and eating tortillas a lot in various cafes, trying to reverse engineer how it is made. In my few attempts to make it at home, I think I am getting better. Basically, you fry up lots of potatoes in lots of olive oil. Then you mix the potatoes with egg and cook as you would an omelet. However, most tortillas are not quite done on the inside, so watching for how the egg is cooking is key. Flipping the tortilla is also a challenge, especially since you need to flip it when the egg is not quite set. They make special pans for this, but a trick that a Spaniard told me about was to use a plate. You put the plate on top of the egg/pan, flip the tortilla so that it is on the plate instead of the pan, and then slide the tortilla off of the plate back in the pan.

6. Rioja

What we’ve most enjoyed about Spanish wine so far is that you can get pretty good Riojas for amazingly cheap. At Al Campo, we’ve been sampling the selection of Riojas in the 2 to 4 euros range. Perhaps we don’t have the most refined wine tastes ever, but we really like these wines. In the US, it seems that one might want to spend $10 to get a half-decent bottle of wine, but here it is possible to spend considerably less and do just fine.

7. Nutella

Nutella on good bread is a common snack for the kids at school and one that I’ve come to love as well. If you don’t know what Nutella is, here is some info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutella

It is available in the states but is more ubiquitous and cheap here. Yum!

8. Fruit (melons, pears, plums)

Seth is in a banana stage right now, which means that we go through a ton of bananas. But we’ve been trying to sample other fruits that seem to be in season here. Our favorites so far are a variety of pear that seems to be peaking right about now and that is very tasty, some pretty and very sweet plums that are yellow, and melon. Apparently Spain is the world’s largest exporter of melons, and right now there is a variety that is green with white/yellow flesh that is sweet and very yummy. So we are eating lots of melon now.

From our Spanish friends we learned a new way to cut melon that makes so much sense that it is a wonder that we haven’t seen it or thought of it before. It is hard to explain in writing, but perhaps I can get Nora to draw a picture so that I can include it in another post.

On the subject of fruit, we also like that we can go to one of countless little fruit stores (fruiterias) in our neighborhood and buy an enormous amount of fruit for quite cheap.

9. Cheese

We were really looking forward to Spanish cheeses and had spent the past year sampling every kind of Spanish cheese that we could find at Whole Foods. It has been harder to find good cheese here than we anticipated. The grocery store has lots of cheese, but they aren’t labeled in ways that make it easy for us to figure out which ones we might like. In the US, we loved Manchego cheese. But here, since Manchego is a region, there are dozens of Manchego cheeses, with no easy way to figure out which ones we would like. The situation is perhaps akin to cheddar cheese in the US. Imagine a whole aisle of cheddar cheese, but instead of adjectives that are familiar (sharp, very sharp, mild, aged, Cabot, Vermont, etc.) there are adjectives that are more difficult to interpret (curado, semi-curado, or no adjective at all). We know the difference between oveja (sheep), cabra (goat), and vaca (cow) cheese. But even though we’ve tried a bunch, we haven’t been able to find the perfect cheeses yet.

We have recently been going to some of the local meat markets, which also have some cheese. We ask for cheese that is “fuerte” (strong) and then get some samples. So we’ve made some progress. But we think that we need to take a field trip to downtown Madrid, where there are some more well stocked cheese stories. So more on this in the future.

I will say, however, that we did find a little stall in a food market that specialized in feta cheese. They had about 10 varieties of fresh feta. I bought one and have been enjoying it on (you guessed it) a baguette. And soon I’m going to see if I can sneak in some feta cheese into our regular pasta with sun dried tomato meal and see if anyone other than me will eat it.

10. Membrillo

Just a brief note on this one. Membrillo is a kind of homemade Spanish jelly that is made out of quince. It is (yet another food item that is) yummy on good bread. You can find it in the US at Whole Foods – go to the cheese section near the Spanish cheeses and ask if you don’t see it. It is a bit more solid than typical jelly and thus is somewhat hard to spread. But a very nice taste combination is to take some cream cheese (or other soft cheese), spread on bread, and then put membrillo on top.

Two other food items that we are worth discussing here. First, those with knowledge of Spanish food might be surprised not to see ham on this list. Ham is a big deal over here. When you go into the grocery store, there is an entire section where there are (no kidding) hundreds of hams for sale, including 50 whole legs of ham hanging from the ceiling. There is also a chain of cafes and stores here called Museo del Jamón. Spaniards are extremely serious about their ham. In fact, there really isn’t a “foodie” culture here (that we have encountered) about anything other than ham. Most of the ham that people eat here would be called prosciutto in the US. We have been overwhelmed by the options for buying this kind of ham so far. We’ve had some that is probably rather cheap – it was rather chewy and almost like ham jerky – not a big hit. But we’ve been told that the better hams are very different and wonderful to eat. But does “better” mean buying a few grams of ham that costs 10 euros per kilo? 20 euros? 100 euros? 500 euros? Stay tuned.

And second, the fish here is amazing. Even run of the mill grocery stores have an incredible selection of very fresh fish of all sorts. Yes, we are smack in the middle of a large country – hours and hours from the ocean. But people here really like their fish and buy lots of it. Unfortunately the more adventurous fish that I might want to try (e.g., there are dozens of types of small whole fish that could crudely be called sardines that people eat here; there are lots of different types of mussels, octopus, and squid) wouldn’t fly on our dinner table. So I will have to continue eating fish when we eat out.